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Thursday, February 20, 2014

Ironic

February 1, 2014

My host “mom” is early thirties, a
journalist, with impeccable English and impeccable fashion sense. Quite frankly she is intimidatingly fabulous.
My first day with my host family was basically a continued subversion of so
many stereotypes about Africa and America.

My host mom is determined to help me taste
Cameroonian culture, today she made me koki, a traditional dish, and she also plans
on bringing me to her favorite nightclub. It’s not the first thing that came to
mind when I thought “African culture.” I’ve been a college student near Albany,
an ok sized city, for three years, but never in my life have I been to a
nightclub.

There was this dude last semester who kept
telling me that I needed to let my hair down and have some fun, and that we
should go dancing, and I was like “Nightclubs are not my scene.” “What is your
scene then,” he demanded, and I said Africa.

And now, because I am obsessed and focused
on understanding and integrating into African culture as best I can (and also
because I DO like to have fun, and occasionally my definition of fun and other
people’s definition overlap) I am going to go clubbing, African style. It’s
pretty ironic and I think it’s fabulous.

I’m loving the fact that my own
expectations about Africa are being contradicted by Cameroon; the vibrancy and
red dirt and warm smiles of Cameroon are very familiar from Mali, but the main
difference I’ve noticed so far is how metropolitan Cameroon, (or Yaoundé at
least) is. I first noticed it in the slightly superior tone of a Cameroonian
ex-pat (we were best friends for ten minutes in the customs line at the airport)
when we discussed the differences between Cameroon and Mali. The “big city”
impression has grown since then, largely because, well, Yaoundé is a big city.
With a population around 1.5 million, Yaoundé dwarfs anywhere I have ever lived
(primarily Hoosick Falls and Siena, each at a solid 3 thousand population).

I am a small town girl in the big city and
the unique flavor of this African city just makes that even
cooler/stranger/more contradictory and interesting. I frequently feel like a country bumpkin,
particularly because we were instructed to bring very conservative clothes, and
the incredible fashion sense of Cameroonians puts me to shame. Whether it’s
traditional, elaborate embroidered dresses or Western jeans and heels,
Cameroonian women rock the fashion world. I’ve never been super self-conscious
about being fashionable, but walking around in a frumpy skirt and men’s
t-shirt, I have clothing envy all the time.

And the education level of most of the
Cameroonians I have interacted with so far puts me to shame. My host mom
rattles on in the perfect English that is necessary for her job, and I feel
like an idiot with my stumbling French.

But as out of place as I sometimes feel, at the back of my mind I love it for the ironic contradiction of so many American stereotypes of Africa. As far as normal Americans go, I am a little bit less clueless about Africa after going to Mali when I was 16 and being obsessed with Africa since 12. But even so, I know nothing, and have everything to learn.

*Note: I did actually go to a nightclub. Maybe it's just Africa, but it could occasionally be my scene.